Leonard Charles Smithers (19 December 1861 – 19 December 1907) was a London bookseller and publisher associated with the Decadent movement.

Biography

Born in Sheffield, Smithers worked as a solicitor, qualifying in 1884,Jon R. Godsall, ''The Tangled Web: A Life of Sir Richard Burton'', Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2008, , p. 396 and became friendly with the explorer and orientalist Sir

Richard Francis Burton Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...

. He published Burton's translation of the '' Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' in 1885. He collaborated with Burton in a translation from the Latin of the Carmina of Caius Valerius

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...

and Priapeia, a collection of erotic poems by various writers. He also published a limited edition of the '' Satyricon'' of Petronius Arbiter. Smithers published works by Aubrey Beardsley,

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic ...

, Aleister Crowley,

Ernest Dowson Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle ...

Arthur Symons Arthur William Symons (28 February 186522 January 1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor. Life Born in Milford Haven, Wales, to Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. In 188 ...

and Oscar Wilde and lesser known figures such as Vincent O'Sullivan and Nigel Tourneur. With Symons and Beardsley, he founded '' The Savoy'', a periodical which ran to eight issues in 1896. In partnership with Harry Sidney Nichols, he published a series of pornographic books under the imprint of the "

Erotika Biblion Society The Erotika Biblion Society General Germany was a pornographic publishing imprint in Victorian London formed by Harry Sidney Nichols and Leonard Smithers in 1898. They formed their name from the 1898 nonfiction treatise of the saint name under ...

": He was notorious for posting a slogan at his bookshop in Bond Street reading "Smut is cheap today". When Beardsley converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, he asked Smithers to “destroy all copies of ''Lysistrata'' and bad drawings...by all that is holy ''all'' obscene drawings." Smithers ignored Beardsley's wishes and continued to sell reproductions as well as forgeries of Beardsley's work. After the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895, Smithers was one of the few publishers prepared to handle "decadent" literature, such as Wilde's '' The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' in 1898, and ''The Savoy''. He went bankrupt in 1900, and died in 1907 from cirrhosis of the liver. His body was found in a house in Parson's Green on his 46th birthday, surrounded by empty bottles of Dr J. Collis Browne's

Chlorodyne Chlorodyne was one of the best known patent medicines sold in the British Isles. It was invented in the 19th century by a Dr. John Collis Browne, a doctor in the British Indian Army; its original purpose was in the treatment of cholera. Browne ...

. He was buried in an unmarked grave, paid for by Lord Alfred Douglas, in a cemetery in

Fulham Palace Road Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth, ...

.Sweet 206

Translations

* Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton. '' Priapeia sive diversorum poetarum in Priapum lusus or Sportive Epigrams on Priapus by divers poets in English verse and prose''. 189

References

Sources

* James G. Nelson, ''Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson''. Rivendale Press, May 2000. * John Sutherland (author), John Sutherland, "The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction", Stanford University Press, 1990, , p. 591. * Bruce S. Harris (ed.), "The Collected Drawings of Aubrey Beardsley", Crown Publishers, 1967, p.v * Rachel Potter, "Obscene Modernism and the Trade in Salacious Books", ''

Modernism/modernity ''Modernism/modernity'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1994 by Lawrence Rainey and Robert von Hallberg. History It covers methodological, archival, and theoretical approaches to modernist studies in the long moder ...

'', Volume 16, Number 1, January 2009, pp. 87–104

* Matthew Sweet (writer), Matthew Sweet, ''Inventing the Victorians'', Faber and Faber, 2001, {{DEFAULTSORT:Smithers, Leonard Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom English book publishers (people) English pornographers 1861 births 1907 deaths People from Sheffield Burials at Fulham Cemetery 19th-century English businesspeople